Rolling Stones to perform in China
Monday, March 3, 2003 (Beijing):
It's official: Beijing and Shanghai will get their own taste of the Rolling Stones' Forty Licks tour.
Two Rolling Stones concert dates have been confirmed for Beijing and Shanghai, an organizer said on Sunday.
The shows, part of the band's 40th anniversary 'Licks' tour, will be the band's first in the world's most populous country.
The British rockers will perform in Shanghai on April 1 and in Beijing on April 4, said Wang Long, an organizer for the Beijing Time New Century Entertainment Co.
Cui Jian, China's most famous rocker, will open for the Stones in Beijing. Cui is hugely popular in China but has rarely been allowed to play big shows in the capital following his performances on Tiananmen Square during the 1989 pro-democracy protests.
Cui, 42, said he taught himself to play the guitar in the 1980s by learning Rolling Stones and Beatles songs.
"They are my heroes, it's a big honor for me '' Cui said.
When the Rolling Stones first rose to fame in the 1960s, China was on the verge of the radical 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, which reviled Western pop culture as spiritual pollution.
Their music first became available in China only after the start of economic and social reforms in the late 1970s.
Cui had his first hit in 1986 with Nothing To My Name, a rock ballad about disillusioned communist youth that became an anthem for the Tiananmen generation.
"It's a dream within in a dream that they are coming and that I will be able to warm up for them,'' said Cui. "I am a little nervous but excited.''
Like the Stones in the West, Cui is considered one of the godfathers of China's rock scene. The former classical trumpet player said he hopes still to be touring at the age of Stones frontman Mick Jagger, who is 59.
In Beijing, the Stones will play the 7,000-seat Workers' Gymnasium.
Tickets have yet to go on sale, Wang said, but bookings are being taken. A few hundred front-row seats will be available for 6,000 yuan (US$ 750), he said, with the rest priced between 500 yuan (US$ 65) and 3,000 yuan (US$ 375).
The top ticket price is about the same as the average Chinese person's annual income.
'Licks', the band's first major tour since 1975, is not built around the launch of a new studio album. Last October, the Stones released the 2-CD Forty Licks, a compilation of favorite tunes from the past four decades and including four new songs.